Also, I finished the first scene in my story this week. Cerebus, do you have any advice for making the act of gliding more realistic?
The last echoes of the call to worship fade into the heat rising off Cordoba, and against Tariq’s back the glider shivers.
A voice in his headset, "Go with God, as they say."
Tariq ibn Fortun al-Muley refocuses his attention from the red roofs spread before him to the drone perched on the railing, here at the top of the minaret. "Well, you're going with me, anyway."
The drone operator coughs in his Vinland call center. "Whoa, there, buster. That is the sort of casual blasphemy that I will not tolerate on one of my shoots."
"Leif," says Tariq, "you're a big, fat Vinlander and you worship nothing but money."
"Money given to us by viewers, some of whom will take offense at your godless, libertine, bleeding-heart, naive, irritating – "
"When are we going live?"
"Thirty seconds ago."
"Fuck you, Leif."
Leif coughs again, which is the closest the dried-up old cynic can come to laughter. "90 seconds."
Tariq closes his eyes. He flexes his toes, thinking about the blocks of stone stacked between him and the ground. The tug and creak of silk, leather, and cypress wood at his back. The sleepy cooing of the pidgeons.
Abbas ibn Firnas might have felt the same grit against his shoes and the load on his shoulders. Smelled the same stone dust, the bird guano, the ancestors of these same orange trees. Not the car exhaust, though, or the sound of the drone's rotors as the flying camera takes up position in the air. He breathes.
"Action," whispers Leif, and Tariq jumps.
They've already recorded the narration for this shot. "My route retraces that of the explorers of old, the men and women who pushed the boundaries of human experience, trade, culture, and war. From the minaret of the Great Mosque of Cordoba to the Forbidden City, follow me..." and on and on.
Tariq has already recorded all his lines. Gladhanded all the executives on four continents. Made sure the bribes were paid. Endured the stupid questions and the posturing by self-satisfied so-called intellectuals. All the bullshit you have to wade through to get done any good in this world.
Now all that remains is to miss the ground.
Tariq doesn't open his eyes until the wind catches him.
"Abbas ibn Firnas," his narration went, "made history in 236 when he leaped from the minaret of the Great Mosque of Cordoba, the dream of flight in his heart and a fortune in silk strapped to his back."
"And today," Leif joked during their last recording session. "It's a Fortun strapped to a piece of shit. Because your name is ibn Fortun," he explained unnessiarily, "and your historically accurate glider is a piece of shit."
Leif was right. The cedar-and-silk triangle creaks and shudders over Tariq, clawing a swath of turbulence down the air. It moves only a little more horizontally than it does vertically, and it slews to the right, but it doesn't quite drop Tariq.
He doesn't think it will. Tariq had tested the glider on incline takeoffs, but it's one thing to skip down a hill and another to fling yourself of a historical monument. Leifs jokes about making snuff films didn't helped.
"This wasn't ibn Firnas's first jump," Tariq mentally reviews the recording he made yesterday. "He'd tried it before in 253, wearing wings made of wood and feathers. He nearly killed himself in the attempt. But he didn't give up. He ransacked the libraries of Al-Andalus looking for help with his dream. He found it in China.
"Kites had been flown in the Middle Kingdom for centuries even then – triangular constructions of silk and bamboo. Abbas didn't know what bamboo was – the writings of Mu'min ibn Said suggest Abbas experimented with cattail reeds – but he did manage to find silk. Enough silk to build Europe's first glider."
Tariq wrestles his replica through the air, trying to look good for Leif's camera, trying to get his own small helmet-mounted camera pointed at the buildings and cars and watching pedestrians.
"And that is the power of multiculturalism," went the narration. "The alchemy of Chinese lore, Arab cleverness, Berber bravery, Andalusian spirit. The mixture greater than the sum of its parts, bearing us all aloft."
They will have to listen now. Tariq will leverage his bravery and ingenuity into a platform he can use, or else this whole life-threatening stunt will be in vain.
A swift shoots past him, effortlessly twisting through his slipstream in search of nothing nobler than breakfast.
Tariq wonders if he has time for the 'you can't see borders from up here' bit, but no. The minaret of the Roman Wall Mosque is coming up on his left.
He leans sideways, fighting the glider...straight ahead...no on his left again...and now Tariq has lost quite a lot of altitude.
The minaret is a lost cause and the dome of the mosque is probably a bad idea. The street in front is already busy with morning traffic and worshipers, but the alley on the side of the building is empty.
Tariq sways back and forth, slaloming like an alpine skier, shedding speed and altitude.
He kicks off the roof of the building next to the mosque – a Vinland Porridge Hut – and slants down toward a wall of whitewashed brick. There he kicks himself vertical, dumps the air out of his glider, and falls ten feet to the pavement. Pigeons and cats scatter, and while he misses the overfull dumpsters standing in the alley. Tariq splashes into the puddle of foul water they have leaked.
The drone buzzes into the alley as Tariq straightens, wincing from the pain his his legs as well as the smell.
"I think I managed that a little more elegantly than Ab – "
Tariq's line is interrupted by an old woman shouting around the corner. "You kids get out of there. Little morons. Playing in garbage water."
Tariq straightens the glider across his shoulders and walks out of the alley.
"Aha," says the woman when she sees him. "A big moron."
